Another picture update

2015 is rapidly vanishing before our eyes so I thought I had better put up my selection of "best" pictures and video clips for the first half of this year.  You can access them  HERE  or  HERE

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Obama Ignoring 5th Circuit, Giving Amnesty Anyway!

The Circuit courts are just one step down from SCOTUS

A panel for the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals has just ruled that the injunction against the Obama administration’s amnesty program will stand.

As you remember, Judge Andrew Hanen issued the injunction last year, effectively putting a stop to the Obama administration’s plans to legalize millions of illegal aliens.

At face value, this is a huge success. An appeals court – one step below the Supreme Court – has agreed that Obama’s amnesty program will remain mothballed pending a lawsuit.

But last week, we learned that the Department of Homeland Security was secretly moving forward with its plan to “legalize” millions of illegal aliens by handing out work permits in clear violation of Judge Hanen’s injunction!

Here’s the DHS memo. Not only does it extend work permits to lawful resident aliens, but it also does the same for illegal aliens who overstayed their visas and those who “Entered Without Inspection.” Apparently that’s what the Obama administration is calling illegal aliens now…

Just to be clear, both a Federal Judge and an Appeals Court Panel have ruled that the Obama administration cannot move forward with this amnesty plan. On top of that, Federal law literally prohibits illegal aliens from working in this country. By ignoring the law and these court rulings, what Obama is doing is unconstitutional!

But, the Obama administration doesn’t care. They are moving forward with amnesty in clear violation of the law and now TWO court orders.

What is Congress doing so far to stop this? Nothing. Actually, that’s not true. Democrats and even some Republicans are hard at work pressuring Conservatives to hold an immigration reform vote. Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) is pressuring Rep. Paul Ryan to hold an amnesty vote. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) is also pressuring Conservatives to give up and just accept amnesty.

Last March, Boehner and McConnell said that they had to let the courts figure this out. Now that two courts have upheld the injunction and Obama is still moving forward with his amnesty program, it is time for Congress to act!

Homeland Security is implementing this regulatory change now. They are already printing work permits for illegal aliens as we speak.

SOURCE

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The High Cost of Resettling Middle Eastern Refugees

The choice: Bring 1 here or help 12 there

 Resettlement in the United States for one Middle Eastern refugee costs American taxpayers an estimated $64,370 over the first five years, 12 times the UN estimate for caring for one refugee in a neighboring Middle Eastern country.

This conservative estimate is one of the findings of a new study by the Center for Immigration Studies. The cost of resettlement includes heavy welfare use by Middle Eastern refugees; 91 percent receive food stamps and 68 percent receive cash assistance. Costs also include processing refugees, assistance given to new refugees, and aid to refugee-receiving communities.

Dr. Steven Camarota, the Center's Director of Research and lead author of the report, commented, "Given limited funds, the high costs of resettling refugees in the United States means that providing for them in neighboring countries in the Middle East is more cost-effective, allowing us to help more people."

View the entire report here

Among the findings:

  On average, each Middle Eastern refugee resettled in the United States costs an estimated $64,370 in the first five years, or $257,481 per household.

  The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has requested $1,057 to care for each Syrian refugee annually in most countries neighboring Syria.

  For what it costs to resettle one Middle Eastern refugee in the United States for five years, about 12 refugees can be helped in the Middle East for five years, or 61 refugees can be helped for one year.

  The UNHCR reports a gap of $2.5 billion in funding that it needs to care for approximately four million Syrians in neighboring countries.

  The five-year cost of resettling about 39,000 Syrian refugees in the United States is enough to erase the current UNHCR funding gap.

  Of Middle Eastern refugee households that have arrived in the last 5 years, 91 percent  receive food stamps and 68 percent receive cash welfare.

  The five-year costs of resettlement in the United States include $9,230 spent by the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) within HHS and the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration (PRM) within the State Department in the first year, as well as $55,139 in expenditures on welfare and education.

  Very heavy use of welfare programs by Middle Eastern refugees, and the fact that they have only 10.5 years of education on average, makes it likely that it will be many years, if ever, before this population will cease to be a net fiscal drain on public coffers - using more in public services than they pay in taxes.

  It is worth adding that ORR often reports that most refugees are self-sufficient within five years. However, ORR defines "self-sufficiency" as not receiving cash welfare only. A household is still considered "self-sufficient" even if it is using any number of non-cash programs such as food stamps, public housing, or Medicaid.

Email from CIS

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Hillary Blames GOP for Mess Created by Bill

Hillary Clinton, saying that the biggest issue of the 2016 election will be the economy, insists that Republicans have offered no solutions, only complaints, while also bearing the blame: “They say, ‘Well, this recovery is so slow.’ Really? Why did we need a recovery? What was the original sin here? It was bad Republican policies!”

Two points. First the “original sin” was not “bad Republican policies” but Bill Clinton’s mortgage policies. Clinton’s rules, in effect, applied affirmative action to the lending industry — which is to say the economic crisis was not a “free market failure” caused by “Republican policies” but was instead the result of socially engineered financial policy by the central government. The mortgage markets welcomed their new customers with open arms, fueling a real estate boom across the board. Eventually, the housing market of cards collapsed, which in turn led to the collapse of financial markets — just in time for Barack Obama’s election in 2008.

In 2008, Bill Clinton admitted, “I think the responsibility that the Democrats have may rests more in resisting any efforts by Republicans in the Congress … to put some standards and tighten up a little on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.”

Second, Hillary Clinton’s comments are also an admission that over the last seven years a Democrat president’s policies are in fact why “this recovery is so slow.”

SOURCE

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Rep. Rohrabacher: `What We Are Witnessing is the Destruction of Western Civilization'

"What we are witnessing is the destruction of Western civilization, not by an armed invasion, but by envelopment," Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) said Wednesday during a hearing on Capitol Hill on the growing refugee crisis in Europe.

"What we have seen over the past few months is unsustainable, and if not checked, will change the fundamental nature of European countries which are now being inundated," said Rohrabacher, who chairs the House Subcommittee on Europe, Eurasia, and Emerging Threats.

"What we are witnessing is the destruction of Western civilization, not by an armed invasion, but instead through envelopment. The effects of this will not soon disappear, but instead could well turn out to be an historic change in the nature of many European countries."

"Migrants fleeing to Europe have been an issue of humanitarian concern for several years, but a wave of immigration erupted into a tsunami this summer when the German government announced it would ignore the Dublin Rules and accept all Syrian refugees that made it to the German border," Rohrabacher said.

The Dublin Rules are a European Union (EU) law that establishes which EU member states are responsible for taking in refugees from outside the EU.

"Earlier this week, the United Nations announced that 218,000 migrants crossed the Mediterranean Sea to Europe just last month. That is more than were recorded in all of 2014. It is expected that around a million asylum seekers of all origins will reach Germany in this year alone," Rohrabacher noted.

He traced the current refugee crisis to a decision made earlier this year by German Chancellor Angela Merkel to grant political asylum to 800,000 migrants from the Middle East even though "Europe has been struggling to assimilate large Muslim populations."

"Even the most optimistic scenarios say that Europe will have to re-direct billions and billions of dollars from supporting their own citizens to accomodating the needs of these refugees," Rohrabacher stated.

"Europe was not prepared for this tremendous influx of thousands and thousands of other people," agreed Rep. Ted Poe (R-TX).

"Some countries take various positions on what to do with the migrants: let them pass through, or maybe not even let them come into their country.

"One such example is Hungary, who is trying to protect the national sovereignty of its own country. And the United States, rather than try to understand the situation in Hungary, even last week the U.S. ambassador dressed down the Hungarians for what the State Department believed was not the right course in dealing with migrants," said Poe.

"Hungary was totally justified in what it is doing to try to stem the flow," Rohrabacher added.

"And frankly, if our European allies are not willing to stem the flow of large numbers of people who are not native to their territory, they will lose their territory. And let me note, that's true of the United States as well."

Rep. Albio Sires (D-NJ) also discussed the need for a better screening process for refugees coming from the Middle East, recounting what the process was like when he immigrated to the U.S. from Cuba: "The influx has been so quickly, so many, that the security issue is very important.

"I remember as a boy when my father was taken away when we first arrived for about four or five days, and my father went through a whole process - 'Did you participate in the Communist Party? Were you involved in the Communist Party?'- back then, and after about four or five days he was returned to us.

"I don't think these countries have any way of screening the people that are going through there like what we went through when I first arrived here."

SOURCE

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Iran's Mirage: More Humiliation to Follow

    The Rouhani-Zarif façade of civility toward the West was enough to persuade the vain, delusional and acquisitive in Western leadership circles that change had finally come again to Iran. However, no amount of Persian tea or Iranian rosewater-drenched ice cream shared between Kerry and Zarif can drown out the deceptive hoax of the JCPOA. Before the ink was dry, Khamenei and the security services announced that the agreement has no standing in Iran.

In the end, it matters little what the government, people, or even the theocratic institutions think is in Iran's best long-term interests.

Unfortunately, for those U.S. career diplomats, hopeful politicians, and international businessmen, normative incentives, such as money, sanctions relief, and better foreign relations take a back seat in a regime such as the Islamic Republic. It is a regime where one man, Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, supported by a clique of militants, makes all the critical decisions.

Just this week, it was announced that Iran's so-called "resistance economy" will not permit any U.S. consumer goods to be imported into Iran -- and just to punctuate the point, Tehran arrested a prominent Iranian-American businessman, Siamak Namazi, and a Lebanese-American, Nazar Zaka, to add to its collection of fraudulently charged hostages: Washington Post journalist Jason Rezaian; former marine Amir Hekmati; Pastor Saeed Abedini, and retired FBI agent Robert Levinson.

For the Obama Administration, there will be more humiliation to follow. This President has been poorly served by his Iran "experts" and untutored diplomats.

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on A WESTERN HEART.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or  here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to  update.  Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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